There is another thing to which I wish to ask attention for a little while on this occasion.
What has always been the evidence brought forward to prove that the Republican party is a sectional party?
The main one was that in the Southern portion of the Union the people did not let the Republicans proclaim their doctrines amongst them.
That has been the main evidence brought forward — that they had no supporters, or substantially none, in the slave Stales.
The South have not taken hold of our principles as we announce them; nor does Judge Douglas now grapple with those principles.
We have a Republican State Platform, laid down in Springfield; in June last, stating our position all the way through the questions before the country.
We are now far advanced in this canvass.
Judge Douglas and I have made perhaps forty speeches apiece, and we have now for the fifth time met face to face in debate, and up to this day I have not found either Judge Douglas or any friend of his taking hold of the Republican platform or laying his finger upon anything in it that is wrong.
I ask you all to recollect that.
Judge Douglas turns away from the platform of principles to the fact that he can find people somewhere who the not allow us to announce those principles.
If be had great confidence that our principles were wrong, he would the hold of them and demonstrate them to be wrong.
But he does not do so. The only evidence he has of their being wrong is in the fact that there are people who wont allow us to preach them.
I ask again is that the way to test the soundness of a doctrine?

I ask his attention also to the fact that by the rule of nationality he is himself fast becoming sectional.
I ask his attention to the fact that his speeches would not go as current now south of the Ohio river as they have formerly gone there.
I ask his attention to the fact that he felicitates himself to-day that all the Democrats of the free States are agreeing with him, while he omits to tell us that the Democrats of any slave State agree with him. If he has not thought of this, I commend to his consideration the evidence in his own declaration, on this day, of his becoming sectional too. I see it rapidly approaching.
Whatever may be the result of this ephemeral contest between Judge Douglas and myself, I see the day rapidly approaching when his pill of sectionalism, which he has been thrusting down the throats of Republicans for years past, will be crowded down his own throat.

How in regard to what Judge Douglas said (in the beginning of his speech) about the Compromise of 1850, containing the principle of the Nebraska bill, although I have often presented my views upon that subject, yet as I have not done so in this canvass, I will, if you please, detain you a little with them.
I have always maintained, so far as I was able, that there was nothing of the principle of the Nebraska bill in the Compromise of 1850 at all-nothing whatever.
Where can you find the principle of the Nebraska bill in that Compromise?
If any where, in the two piece of the Compromise organizing the Territories of New Mexico and Utah.
It was expressly provided in these two acts, that, when they came to be admitted into the Union, they should be admitted with or without slavery, as they should choose, by their own Constitutions.
Nothing was said in either of those acts as to what was to be done in relation to slavery during the territorial existence of those Territories, while Henry Clay constantly made the declaration (Judge Douglas recognizing him as a leader) that, in his opinion, the old Mexican laws would control that question during the territorial existence, and that these old Mexican laws excluded slavery.
How can that be used as a principle for declaring that during the territorial existence as well as at the time of framing the Constitution, the people, if you please, might have slaves if they wanted them?
I am not discussing the question whether It is right or wrong ; but bow are the New Mexican and Utah laws patterns for the Nebraska bill?
I maintain that the organization of Utah and New Mexicodid not establish a general principle at all. It had no feature of establishing a general principle.
The acts to which I have referred were a part of a general system of Compromises.
They did not lay down what was proposed as a regular policy for the Territories ; only an agreement in this particular case to do in that way, because other things were done that were to be a compensation for it. They were allowed

An XML version of this text is available for download,
with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted
changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.